he asked me rather awkwardly whether I could pull any strings for him to get "demobbed."
"It's all a question of 'pull,'" he said, "and I'm not good at that kind of thing. But I want to get home."
"Everybody does," I said.
"Yes, I know, and of course I want to play the game, and all that. But the fact is, my wife—she's only a kid, you know—is rather hipped with my long absence. She's been trying to keep herself merry and bright, and all that, with the usual kind of war-work. You know—charity bazaars, fancy-dress balls for the wounded, Red Cross work, and all that. Very plucky, too. But the fact is, some of her letters lately have been rather—well—rather below par,—you know—rather chippy and all that. The fact is, old man, she's been too much alone, and anything you can do in the way of a pull at the War Office"
I told him bluntly that I had as much influence at the War Office as the charwoman in Room M.I.8, or any other old room—not so much—and he was damped, and apologised for troubling me. However, I promised to write to the one High Bird with whom I had a slight acquaintance, and this cheered him up considerably.
I stayed chatting for some time—the usual small-talk—and it was only when I said good-night that he broached another subject which interested me a good deal.
"I'm getting a bit worried about Wickham Brand," he remarked in a casual kind of way.
"How's that?"
I gathered from Harding's vague, disjointed sentences that Brand was falling into the clutches of a German hussy. He had seen them together at the Opera—they had met as if by accident—and one evening he had seen them together down by the Rhine outside Cologne. He
